$160,000 is nothing if it keeps clients happy b/c you can point to "diversity" numbers. For example, who wants to lose Walmart (which demands racial preferences from its outside counsel) as a client, when you can make it happy by hiring a few under-qualified minorities each year and sticking them on mindless doc review/diligence (and maybe even as token note-takers at client meetings)? All that time is still billable to boot. By the time they are too senior that you can't hide them on doc review any more, the AA hires are so miserable from the non-stop doc review that they quit. You then replace them with a 1st year AA hire and repeat. It's a win for the firm on all levels, the AA hire on some levels (good = big-firm salary, resume line; bad = no real experience), and the client on none (a temp or legal asst could do the AA associates' work at a fraction of the cost).

7:30 pm March 13, 2007

I was there wrote:

Except Wilcher's Why is it that white males do well notwithstanding their grades in law school, or where they went to school? is directly contradicted by Sander's findings that whites who graduated Michigan with better grades did better 15 years out of law school than whites who graduated Michigan with worse grades.

7:38 pm March 13, 2007

K&E IS RACIST wrote:

Kirkland & Ellis is a major offender of this law. "The Kirkland Diversity Fellowship awards a $15,000 stipend and a summer associate position in one of our Firm's five domestic offices. Minority law students who have completed their second year of law school are eligible to apply" (but not whites). See http://www.kirkland.com/ourFirm/diversity.aspx

7:41 pm March 13, 2007

J wrote:

"What if they're just trying to satisfy demands of corporate clients?"

Isn't civil rights law rather clear that customer preference is no justification for discriminating on the basis of race or sex? Why would this be any different for law firms?

9:22 pm March 13, 2007

Warren Burger wrote:

This Levey guy has an interesting interpretation of Weber.

1:13 am March 14, 2007

Gotta do what you gotta do. wrote:

Right or wrong I'd rather be at the firm that kisses up and keeps all of our clients (and my job) by bringing in extra minorities. Sure, ideally they're just as good as everyone else, but if they're not then it's just a cost of doing business. I can't blame a firm for trying to compete.

Law schools are gatekeepers and when they discriminate they rob good people of life-changing opportunities. Law firms are businesses and they are just doing backflips for clients. For a $5 million book of business I'd hire only Indonesians and let the client call me by a wierd nickname. The only way to solve the problem is to address client expectations/behavior. No big firm will be willing to go first.

1:33 am March 14, 2007

A wrote:

I'm dismayed by the presumption that better grades = better performance as an associate or, worse yet, better lawyer. Once in the door, what matters far, far more is the level of mentoring an associate receives and the degree to which the associates is informally "promoted" to better assignments, better visibility, etc throughout the firm and to clients. Numerous studies show that the level of mentoring/promotion that minorities/women receive at firms is woefully below what white males receive. I've also seen a number of white men receive offers -- despite bad grades -- because of variety of factors (connection to partners at the firm, recommendations, good interviewing skills). Have either Levey or Sander ever even practice at a firm?

2:22 am March 14, 2007

William Rehnquist wrote:

Mr. Warren Burger, I believe you have a strange opinion of Weber. The plain language supports Mr. Levey's opinion as does the legislative history.

8:11 am March 14, 2007

Ted wrote:

A, it's not a "presumption" that better grades makes better performance more likely. It's an empirical fact. Does everyone with good grades succeed and bad grades fail? Of course not, but neither does everyone who smokes get lung cancer. Counterexamples do not disprove tendencies.

11:55 am March 14, 2007

White Males on the Defense wrote:

Yawn. Give a person advanced degrees and he figure out how to justify the methods used to preserve white privilege with "data" and his "logic" or whatever. Hopefully the clients keep up the pressure to break down the implicit discrimination against many minority groups. If you cannot recognize this you may be a practitioner of this racism.

12:15 pm March 14, 2007

a wrote:

I wasn't a racist until I read 11:55's post.

12:59 pm March 14, 2007

John Hart Ely wrote:

Liberals asked too much by asking courts to enforce the values of a small, elite section of society. Conservatives asked too much by asking everyone to put blind faith in federalism and separation of powers - as current events demonstrate, those in the majroty/power will naturally tend to make systematic efforts to block minorities/the powerless from getting adequate representation. Thus, all nine members of the Court decided on the principle of equality to keep the wheels of democracy and civil society spinning freely. Properly understood, it's a true compromise: those who are oppressed are given Constitutional protections to fight for themselves in the public sphere. If white male lawyers are truly being oppressed, then they deserve the protections of the law ... just as African Americans did during the Civil Rights Movement. If not ...

1:22 pm March 14, 2007

WD wrote:

Where is this conspiracy to promote white males at the expense of women and minorities? I am a white male and I WANT IN!

1:33 pm March 14, 2007

Walk A Mile in My Shoes wrote:

What is sad is that this diversity problem can't be solved by the world's best problem solvers-lawyers. With all the degress, legal experience and analytical minds in this country, we are still stump by how to make america (corporate america) more inclusive and diverse. As lawyers, we should be ashamed that our clients have taken up a battle that we should be leading. But for the clients efforts what would our law firms look like? As an AA lawyer I dare say I would not have an opportunity to be a lawyer, let alone practice corporate law without someone standing up to address the inequities of our society. The real issue is not affirmative action or being competent. Smoking mirrors. The real issue is what are we doing to make law firms more inclusive? Not only for racial minorities but minorities in general (gender, age, sexual orientation and religous)? That aside, this debate has been going on since blacks entered the profession in 1844. Some of the same arguments have been previously asserted to exclude blacks and women from the ABA. It is my hope that the next generation will not concern themselves with such issues and will feel confident establishing their future in this society.

4:20 pm March 14, 2007

Tired of this conversation wrote:

"Yes" hit the nail on the head -- "who wants to lose Walmart (which demands racial preferences from its outside counsel) as a client, when you can make it happy by hiring a few under-qualified minorities each year and sticking them on mindless doc review/diligence (and maybe even as token note-takers at client meetings)? All that time is still billable to boot. By the time they are too senior that you can't hide them on doc review any more, the AA hires are so miserable from the non-stop doc review that they quit. You then replace them with a 1st year AA hire and repeat."

If law firms actually stopped behaving this way and made a SINCERE effort to improve diversity, we all could quit repeating this conversation over, and over, and over again. Recognize this: the willingness to have a "token black associate" just to satisfy a client--rather than an actual commitment to diversity--is, in the end, counter-productive and ultimately racist.

8:36 pm March 14, 2007

Thomas Paine wrote:

It's common sense that if you discriminate in favor of hiring a group of people based on ANY characteristic that is not correlated with good perfermance, that group of people will not perform as well. Before you call me a racist, let's imagine if it wasn't race - say, for example, a competitive firm decided to have a preference for people who have green eyes and hired disproportionately large numbers of green-eyed people. It stands to reason that the green-eyed group will be on average less qualified than the non-green-eyed group. Not because people with green eyes are less qualified, but because that group was hired under a preference that prevented them from having to meet the same standards as other people.

This might seem really basic to some of you, but I assure you that a lot of readers out there (11:55, for example)will insist this isn't true, that the green-eyed group could still be as qualified even if the numbers were large. And those people believe in affirmative action.

12:21 am March 15, 2007

Falstaff wrote:

Monsieur Paine. The pressure is no doubt on for minorities who, for whatever reason, are hired as corporate attorneys. And there are, in fact, some minorities who earned their positions through good grades, law journal -- with no quota system -- and moot court. Some even have had the good fortune to get hired as federal law clerks through -- dare I say it -- merit. Regardless of who they are, though, or how they got there, they all realize the pressure. You don't think there's any less of a point system for getting gently pushed out of a law firm after two to four years are up, do you?

About Law Blog

The Law Blog covers the legal arena’s hot cases, emerging trends and big personalities. It’s brought to you by lead writer Jacob Gershman with contributions from across The Wall Street Journal’s staff. Jacob comes here after more than half a decade covering the bare-knuckle politics of New York State. His inside-the-room reporting left him steeped in legal and regulatory issues that continue to grab headlines.

Must Reads

Plaintiffs' lawyers dodged a bullet last year when the U.S. Supreme Court spared a quarter-century-old precedent that had served as the legal linchpin of the modern investor class-action case. Despite that win, a new report suggests that securities class actions have lost some of their firepower.

In a week in which images of Prophet Muhammad were connected to acts of terror and defiant expressions of freedom, a sculpture of the prophet of Islam inside the U.S. Supreme Court has drawn little notice.

The salacious allegations against Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz that surfaced in a federal lawsuit involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have generated international attention. Drawing less coverage is the lawsuit itself -- a case with the potential to expand the rights of crime victims during federal investigations.